This invention relates to a method of centralizing management of a number of computers and network devices, and more specifically to an improved method of managing a number of devices for a data center automatically.
In a computer system used in a data center, carrier, or enterprise, a system composed of many devices (server and other computers, network devices such as routers, network switches, and load balancers, disk arrays and other storage systems, etc.) is run by intricate cooperation of the devices, a management server (a computer which executes management software) is employed to manage the system efficiently.
Configuration information of the devices which is basic information in management of the system performed by the management server is updated manually when there is a change in the devices.
Manually inputted configuration information has to be checked for its correctness to eliminate typing errors and the like. This is a problem for middle to large-sized data centers since finding out of the many devices the one that has been modified takes a lot of labor.
Automatic system configuration information collection has been proposed to reduce the labor of manually updating configuration information. One of known techniques of automatically collecting system configuration information is to scan the entire network of a data center to find a newly added device (US 2003/9551 A).